It appears that internet and online marketing is going to have its next big switch. Internet is now switching towards becoming a flow of instant information. The online world is now being represented by “nowness”!

But what does the word “nowness” mean? Isn’t nowness just social media marketing? We’ve known about that for a long time now. Yes. But the concept of “nowness” and immediacy give us a great way to make sense of it, and a better understanding of how to make it work for us.

Often search engines are criticized because a lot of the information shown is out dated. Search engines are trying to address this problem by focusing on sources such as Wikipedia, that have a community of updaters, or pointing you towards fresh news content, if your search is time contingent, or permitting you to sort by date. Search is also rather anonymous, as opposed to personal!

The appeal of Facebook, Twitter or other social media sites are that they provide an immediacy of information. There is a persistent news flow, updated often. They also supply this information in the context of a trusted filter i.e. your friend network. That’s a big shift in how information will be accessed, especially as more and more people come to view the web from this perspective.

If the web is indeed a place, it is starting to look less like a library, and more like a river.

Site Comparision of Google, Facebook and Twitter

What does this nowness mean for SEO?

It means SEOs will need to study more about what traffic is, where it is coming from, and how to attract it.

SEO’s should look at where online visitors are spending their time. It isn’t on web pages or websites, increasingly. Online visitors are now spending their time within a trusted medium that provides a constant flow of fresh information. So its inevitable, that a site owner or a SEO professional should think about how to direct these channels towards a website, and make sure visitors dangle around long enough to buy what the site owner is selling before they move on.

Its obvious that neither search engines will disappear, nor people will stop publishing web pages. Nor are they going to stop browsing web pages. But how should social media activity be characterized, and does social media activity differ from search visitor activity?

The main features of social media activity are immediacy, trust, the flying visit, relevancy, and remarkable-ness!

So:

• Encourage user signups or registration on your site to help secure visitors
• Provide time limited membership deals and offers
• Offer creative tools, multiple content formats, interactive elements and other promotional tools that mimic the pleasing features of social media
• Be distinct, special, memorable and remarkable so people talk about you to their friends and other networks
• When going broad, facilitate faster growth by leveraging existing networks
• Focus on establishing trust
• Go niche

Social media channels are like the rest of the web in that most of it is junk. So how do people gauze the noise and spotlight on the good bits? “Trust” and “Being Remarkable” are the main aspects.

By the way, when asked about twitter, Larry Page had this to say:

I have always thought we needed to index the web every second to allow real time search. At first, my team laughed and did not believe me. With Twitter, now they know they have to do it. Not everybody needs sub-second indexing but people are getting pretty excited about real time

Google aren’t asleep on the “nowness” issue!

Suggested Reading on “being remarkable”, and how to apply it to your strategy:

Purple Cow

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